Me and My Imaginary Friends

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Etiquette, a Movie Spoiler, T Wii-ing, and Arrested Development

This post will not be in chronological order, which is soooo against my nature...

On Saturday, I got, er, missed a phone call from a friend.  She and her sister want to throw a surprise party for their third sister at my house.  No problem.  I don't really like surprise parties (you should read that as I HATE SURPRISE PARTIES WITH A PASSION THAT BURNS BRIGHTER THAN 12 MILLION SUNS!), so I feel a little odd about turning a friend into a surprise party victim.  But I'm at least willing to acknowledge that this girl's sisters know her better than I.  She may like surprise parties. 

But the other odd thing is that this is a housewarming party.  That is far more odd for me.  I guess some people have done it this way, but I thought the whole point of a housewarming party was to show off the new house.  How can we do that if the party is at my house?  Simply put, we can't. 

I think I'm terrible at things like etiquette.  But even I understand that basic fact about a housewarming party.  It would never even occur to me to have a housewarming party at a location other than the new house.  If pressed, I guess I can think of two reasons for not having it on location: 1) wanting to have it before the house is ready so the new homeowner can benefit from the gifts she receives and/or 2) wanting to invite more people than the new home can hold.  Both of those are probably valid in this case.  The new homeowner is a single mom buying her first house.  She will probably need all the help she can get decorating her house - that crap can be so expensive.  And while her place has a great plan for a single mother and her young daughter, it won't hold more than about 20 people, maybe a few more if we all really like each other.  The family this girl belongs to is really popular, so I can imagine them wanting to invite at least twice that number, if not triple.

Anyhoo, I shared my thoughts with one of the sisters.  She's going to talk it over with her other sister and get back to me.  If they still don't want to have the party at the new house, I will let them use my place.  I just hope they wait a couple of weeks and have it at the new house. 

So, T came over on Saturday afternoon.  We ate lunch and then went to a movie.  We saw "Becoming Jane."  I don't want to spoil the ending for you, but come on, don't most of you know how Jane Austen lived her life?  Not only am I very familiar with the details of Jane's life, I'd also seen the movie before.  I found it quite hysterical when T got upset/annoyed about a particular plot twist.  She said to me, "I'm gonna be so mad at you if this turns out [spoiler deleted]."  See, this was even funnier coming from T because she and I have each read the Stephanie Barron novels about Jane Austen.  These novels are fictional accounts of mysteries that happened in Jane Austen's life - very much along the lines of "Murder, She Wrote" with Jane Austen playing the role of Jessica Fletcher.  However, Stephanie Barron has done enough homework to place the books in locations where Jane is known to have been and to include characters from her life that really existed (like various family members).  The stories are littered with footnotes that address real facts (such and such character from such and such novel was loosely based on this person who Jane knew in real life).  So I recognized the cottage where they lived and was waiting on a significant plot point to happen long before it ever did.  But T went in to this movie without thinking about any of that stuff.  Perhaps she was thinking more about watching a Jane Austen story than the story of Jane Austen.  She was completely surprised when it turned out the way that it did.  Well, I thought her reaction was funny, anyway.

After we got back to my place, T wanted to exercise.  I just looked at her like she had three heads.  Eventually, a thought struck me - my Wii is fun and gives you a little bit of exercise.  So we played Wii for an hour.  YAY!  I finally found someone that I can beat in Wii Tennis.  And that "give her a break, it was her first time" excuse ain't gonna work.  She beat me at Wii Bowling.  It was my worst game of Wii Bowling in, like, ever.  She left in time to get to bed at a reasonable hour for her meeting the next morning.

Finally, we get to Arrested Development.  I never watched this show when it was in production.  I don't know why.  The Doctor told me that it was really funny, but I never took the time to figure out when it was on.  I think I've learned my lesson.  The only two shows that The Doctor has recommended to me as "funny" are stinking hi-larious (King of the Hill and Arrested Development).  A few months ago, I figured out that G4 (a video game channel) was playing re-runs of AD.  I set up my DVR to record all shows.  I fell in love with the show, even though I had a hard time figuring out what was going on.  The plots are so outrageous that if you haven't seen previous shows, you can easily get lost.  That didn't matter to me.  I knew what I was watching was completely unique and worth struggling through.

I finally broke down and bought the entire series on DVD a couple of weeks ago (two and a half seasons).  I finished season one last week and had moved on to season two.  Poly and I Dunno came over on Friday night to watch a movie.  I promised I Dunno that we would watch Serenity, a sci-fi movie with lots of action and creepiness and some funny, funny lines.  Poly saw my AD DVDs and asked about that show.  I literally couldn't talk about it without giggling hysterically.  Each time I thought of a new scene to describe to him, I giggled through the explanation.  Poly thought it sounded funny enough that he wanted to watch it.  I didn't want to let I Dunno down.  I just didn't think he would get most of the humor in AD. 

So, I sent Poly home with the first season DVD set.  Less than 24 hours later, I got a txt message from Poly stating, "Arrested Development is like cocaine.  I'm almost done with the second disc."  There are at least 6 episodes on each disc.  He'd seen almost 12 episodes.  This is from a guy who rarely watches TV because he is so busy.  I'm so happy when I can introduce someone to my latest TV addiction.  I'm always forming new addictions - welcome to my world.  Now I just have to introduce him to the glory that is the DVD commentary.  I live for Special Features.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I knew y'all had good taste. LOVE AD and King of the Hill. My sis bought Firefly & loves it. Need to see it. I'll come over and you can beat me at Wii everything.

I tend to agree with you about the housewarming party as well. Someone gave my sis one but held it at their house since it was roomier & she was doing all the cooking. That made sense,

I'm trying to avoid working this evening so am very glad you updated your blog!

word verification: hheidi. who's she?

12:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love it when I make the blog :) even if it's to be laughed at (Just kidding)

My behavior was typical oblivious NF...forget reality for idealism. At least I'm only that way with movies now, not my life :)

I wanna see AD now!

10:41 AM  

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